M.I.A's fourth album Matangiis in stores this week, and to coincide with the big release the eccentric singer/rapper posed for a spread in V Magazine's winter issue, where she sported some designs from Jeremy Scott and Sport Max, with styling by Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele. Check out additional images from the spread below, in addition to some highlights form her interview. The issue hits stands November 14.

"I’m not really a pop star. I don’t think I’m popular enough to be a proper pop star. I prefer being called a rapper," M.I.A. reveals in the interview. "I’d called the last album MAYA, which is not actually my real name. It’s a fake name. The concept of that record was about illusion, about the material idea of the world and how we view it. So when I got to the Matangi thing, it was about using my real name—Mathangi."

"I’d basically given up on music and then I found out all this stuff about my name," she added. "It’s funny, my last album was kind of really hating on Google and everything it represented…and then that was the way I found out all this stuff about my name. It was like being led to spirituality via technology."